ROHIT PATEL

    What is dpupdchk.exe and Why Is It Running?   You are no doubt reading this article because you are wondering what on earth that dpupdchk.exe process is doing in your Task Manager window… there’s no description and it just keeps coming back. So what is it anyway? In case you aren’t sure what we’re talking about, if you sort by “Image Name” you might see something similar to the screenshot below. And that’s what we’ll be explaining to you today. So What Is It Anyway? This process is some type of automatic update checker from Microsoft IntelliPoint (as far as we can tell), but here’s how we actually diagnosed it… First, if you are using Vista you can right-click on the process and choose to Open File Location. …which will open up the containing folder, so you can drill down into exactly what the file is by looking at the properties. Unfortunately, this process just has zero information in the properties  dialog… shame on you, Mi...

  What is mDNSResponder.exe / Bonjour and How Can   I Uninstall or Remove It?      You are no doubt reading this article because you’ve noticed the mDNSResponder.exe process  running in Task Manager, you don’t remember installing it, and it doesn’t show up in the  Add/Remove programs in Control Panel. So what is it, and how do we get rid of it?   What is mDNSResponder.exe or Bonjour? The mDNSResponder.exe process belongs to the Bonjour for Windows service, which is Apple’s “Zero Configuration Networking” application, typically installed  automatically by iTunes. If you’ve ever wondered how one iTunes install can talk to another on the  same local network, Bonjour is what actually does this behind the  scenes. Don’t use iTunes? You aren’t alone, and that’s not the only way that Bonjour gets installed on your computer. It’s also bundled in a whole bunch of other software, like Pidgin, Skype, and Safari, and used to connec...

    What are wmpnscfg.exe and wmpnetwk.exe and  Why are they running?   So you’ve been going through Task Manager trying to figure out why so many services are running when you notice there’s two items for Windows Media Player in the list… but you don’t even use Media Player. What’s up with that? It’s not like the processes take a lot of memory… I just get irritated when there’s a process that restarts for no good reason. You disable it, and then somehow it’s back. Annoying! What Is This Service Anyway? Windows Media Player 11 can share media between different computers on the same network, and can even share media with the XBox 360 as well. For this to work, there’s a network sharing service that shares the library even if Media Player isn’t open. It’s really a great system if you use it. Both of these processes are part of the Windows Media Player Sharing system, so if you use those features you should not disable it. Disabling Medi...

  What is ctfmon.exe And Why Is It Running?    You are no doubt reading this article because you are frustrated with the ctfmon.exe  process that just won’t stop opening no matter what you do. You remove it from the startup  items and it just magically reappears. So what is it? Ctfmon is the Microsoft process that controls Alternative User Input and the Office Language bar. It’s how you can control the computer via speech or a pen tablet, or using the onscreen keyboard inputs for asian languages. If you are using any of the above, you should leave it enabled. For everybody else, we’ll get to the job of disabling this annoying service.   Depending on your system configuration, there are a number of different steps to disable it. I’ve tried to list all the methods below. Step 1: Disabling in Microsoft Office 2003 We can remove the alternative text input from Microsoft Office 2003 by just removing  that feature in the setup. Note: I haven’t fig...

  What is dwm.exe And Why Is It Running?    You are no doubt reading this article because you are wondering why this dwm.exe process is taking more memory than you think it should, and you are curious what it does. Thankfully for you, we have the answer. So What Is It Anyway? Desktop Window Manager (dwm.exe) is the compositing window manager that gives you all those pretty effects in Windows Vista: Transparent windows, live taskbar thumbnails (that you can resize now), and even the Flip3D switcher that you can disable and replace with Switcher. What happens in Vista is that applications write the picture of their window to a specific place in memory, and then Windows creates one “composite” view of all the windows on the screen before sending it to your monitor. Because Vista is keeping track of the contents of each window, it can add effects when layering the windows such as the transparency we’re all used to, as well as the live preview thu...

  What is jusched.exe And Why Is It Running?    If you’ve looked in Task Manager and wondered what on earth the jusched.exe process is and if you can turn it off, then you are in luck. This process is the Java Update scheduler,  which is a process that wastes memory all the time just to check once a month whether  there are new updates to Java. There’s a scheduled tasks feature built into Windows for this type of thing… the java update  scheduler is obviously not being used for critical updates since it’s only scheduled to check once each month. Since I simply can’t understand why the process needs to waste my memory,  it has to go.   What you’ll need to do is open up Control Panel, and then if you are in XP you can click on the Java icon, or in Vista you can click on Additional Options, and then click on Java. Once you have the Java Control Panel open, select the Update tab, and then uncheck the box for “Check ...

What is svchost.exe And Why Is It Running? You are no doubt reading this article because you are wondering why on earth there are nearly a dozen processes running with the name svchost.exe . You can’t kill them,  and you don’t remember starting them… so what are they? This article is part of our series explaining various processes found in Task Manager, including: jusched.exe, dwm.exe, ctfmon.exe, wmpnetwk.exe, wmpnscfg.exe,  mDNSResponder.exe, conhost.exe, rundll32.exe, Dpupdchk.exe, and Adobe_Updater.exe. Do you know what those services are? Better start reading! So What Is It? According to Microsoft: “svchost.exe is a generic host process name for services that  run from dynamic-link libraries”. Could we have that in english please? Some time ago, Microsoft started moving all of the functionality from internal Windows services into .dll files instead of .exe files. From a programming perspective this makes more sense for reusability… but the problem is that...